Wearing many hats

Dr. Bangdiwala engaging the audience with his many hats. Photo Credit: Linda Kastleman

At last week’s Student Global Health Committee’s 5^th Annual Charity Gala, faculty members talked compellingly about their global health commitment and experiences. Maternal and Child Health associate professor Trude Bennett, PhD movingly described her commitment to Vietnam, which goes back more than 40 years, to the war and its aftermath. Biostatistics professor Kant Bangdiwala, PhD rapidly put on and took off the hats of many different countries. They each signified the multiple countries of his heritage, and where he has worked. He’s done research, lived and taught in a lot of countries! Kant is awesome!

Yesterday, a visitor to the SPH commented on how impressed she was by how skilled our faculty members are in multiple domains. We expect, and they routinely demonstrate excellence in teaching, research and service; routine, as in every day. It’s expected that our faculty members would excel in research, and they do. But we don’t just pay lip service to teaching and service. We live it. I was thrilled that, at the end of the fascinating lecture about teaching that Dr. David Kleinbaum (Distinguished Professor of Epidemiology at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health) gave here last week, several Epidemiology students came up to me and said how excited they were by the student-selected teaching awards. Then, they went on to give examples of many fine teachers in the department! This is in one of the strongest Epidemiology departments in the country. That makes me really proud.

Very late last night, I scanned our SharePoint drafts file (Thanks to Mae Beale, hopefully, we will not edit old drafts ever again!) and I realized that over the course of the day, besides attending a lecture and being in multiple meetings, I’d worked on six different, very substantial documents, some of them simultaneously. We all wear a lot of hats!

Tipping my hat to our many-hatted faculty members!

Barbara